The removal of toxic materials from toxic weapon projectiles, such as chemical weapon projectiles, is a major problem for all nations having aging toxic weapons. Typically, the toxic materials within such projectiles are extremely lethal and cannot be dealt with except under extremely secured conditions.
Many of the toxic materials used in toxic chemical weapon projectiles are liquid in form. For such projectiles, prior methods for removing the toxic material from the projectiles generally entail disposing a suction tube into the toxic agent cavity of the projectiles and vacuuming out the toxic material from the cavity. The problems with such methods are several-fold. First of all, the methods are of no use where some or all of the toxic materials are non-liquid in form. This is a considerable problem because many of the liquid toxic materials tend to coagulate with age and form large solid masses within the toxic agent cavity. Secondly, such prior art methods do nothing towards removing the considerable amount of toxic materials which continue to adhere to the interior walls of the projectile.
Accordingly, there is a need for an apparatus for removing toxic materials from toxic weapon projectiles which avoids these problems in the prior art in a simple, inexpensive and efficient manner.